Vachnedze, Nato (1904-1953)

The biggest Soviet star of the 1920s and 30s, she debuted in the pioneering Georgian film Arsen Dzhordzhiashveli (1921, Ivan Perestiani) and became an enormously popular across the Soviet Union while still only 19 following her lead role in Three Lives (1923, Ivan Perestiani). She remained in Georgian films until her popular star turn as a gypsy in The Living Corpse (1929, Fyodor Otsep), after which she appeared regularly in Russian films. Unusually for her era, she did not play proletarian heroines, but instead specialized in glamorous roles in melodramas and continued to star in films until the Soviet entry into World War II. She died in a plane crash in 1953.Nato Vachnadze House MuseumIMDB page

VUFKU

The All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema administration was a Ukrainian film studio most remembered for providing a home for director Aleksandr Dovzhenko and producing Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Notable films include: Locksmith and Chancellor (1923, Vladimir Gardin), Love’s Berries (1926, Aleksandr Dovzhenko), Benya Krik (1926, Vladimir Vilner), Zvenigora (1928, Aleksandr Dovzhenko), Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov), Arsenal(1929, Aleksandr Dovzhenko) and Earth(1930, Aleksandr Dovzhenko). The studio was purged in 1929-1930, and released only one more film before being wound up in 1933.VUFKU films, 1923-1933

War Communism (1918-21)

This was the interrelated economic policies of the newly installed Bolshevik government as it attempte to consolidate its power following the October Revolution. The priorities were to ensure that city residents did not starve and that the Red Army was supplied well enough to fight back the counterrevolutionary forces during the Civil War. To achieve these goals, food was strictly rationed, all private enterprise was nationalized, strikes were banned and the countryside was regularly requisitioned (or looted) to feed the cities. The result was that the Civil War was won, but both the agriculture and industry collapsed, leaving the economy shattered. In 1921, once the Civil War ended, Lenin brought in the New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed for a certain amount of free enterprise.